Geokolloquium der Fakultät 3

taught by Dr. Ben Woodard

Date: Tuesday 5th DS Place: ABS/ CON1

Course description:

The concept of uplift, that an animal or human being (either at an individual or species level) can be evolved or improved through accelerated and artificial procedures, is common to both science fiction and social and political theory. Whether by genetic, epigenetic, technological, or social means, uplift has been bound up with implicit and explicit racist, colonial, and eugenical notions for the past 200 years or more. This is in part due to the fact that evolution has, and continues to be, misconstrued as general improvement. Uplift assumes that there is already a clear notion of higher and lower life in both biological and moral senses.

This course will look at this history of the concept of uplift across literature in all its historical complexity.